To touch or not to touch: Poking the Windows 8 version of Lenovo’s Ultrabook

The original Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon was the first real Ultrabook we’d seen come out of Intel’s initiative to slim down and beef up laptops. Now that the touch-oriented Windows 8 has been out for a few months, Lenovo followed up with a touch version of the computer we so loved, named a mouthful of words that go like this: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch. Other than the touch screen, this is just a heavy version of a computer that we really enjoyed using. But since the only major difference is the existence of the touch screen, and that feature comes at a premium of $150, customers will have to look inside themselves to decide. When choosing between the two models, are you a Windows 8 believer?

The X1 Carbon Touch is virtually identical to its Windows 7-running predecessor, the X1 Carbon, which we reviewed last summer. We advise checking that in-depth edition out for more details on everything that hasn't changed since then. The touch version maintains the exact same physical dimensions, including a thickness of 18.9 millimeters, but it's .41 pounds heavier at 3.4 pounds to the regular X1 Carbon's 2.99 pounds. This is still a more than decent weight for a 14-inch ultrabook. It's questionable whether that fractional difference even makes a difference.

The touchscreen itself works without fault, and all of the requisite Windows gestures go off without a hitch. Swipes, scrolls, pinches, and taps all work fine. Despite our best, most disgusting efforts, it was hard to get the matte screen to pick up our fingerprints. We did manage to leave some smudges by applying a healthy amount of pressure. While they were visible from an angle— and in the right light—on the surface of the screen, they didn't impede our regular viewing experience.

On the downside, the screen is, visually, a little strange: its blacks are not deep and colors are washed out. Granted, if you're getting an ultrabook, you're probably not dealing much with tasks that require color accuracy, but it's noticeable even without a better screen around to compare.

Practically speaking, it's hard to get used to integrating the touch screen into a work flow, especially when the touchpad, buttons, and even Lenovo's characteristic touchpoint are within closer reach than the screen. These aspects are just easier to use for the relatively small desktop elements (moving, resizing, closing windows, opening applications). The only time I felt myself compelled to swipe was when waking up the computer and needing to get through the lock screen, which needs to be swiped or pulled away. The gesture is easier with a swipe, but so long as I'm not dealing with the metro interface, the existence of the touch screen has no bearing on my use.

Ironically, I might be compelled to reach out and touch my monitor instead of the touchpad if its multitouch didn't work as well as it did. We've seen disastrous implementations of things like two-finger scrolling on Windows machines in the past, but two finger scrolling works perfectly on the X1 Carbon still. More importantly, the existence of the gestures doesn't interfere with simpler input elements that have always existed, like click-and-drag.

Likewise, if I were compelled to be in the Metro interface more often, the touch screen would be the superior input method. But being that I use laptops for work and all of my needed applications were on the desktop side, Metro became only a minor annoyance that accidentally cropped up on occasion.

Funny enough, Lenovo's interface gives back the start button that Windows 8 takes away, though it's a handicapped version. In the bottom left corner of the screen is the Lenovo QuickLaunch button, which allows you to do things like search for applications to open and access frequently-used ones on the desktop side.

Enlarge/ Lenovo's quick start menu that helps out those who might miss the home button.

The laptop also comes with some other, less welcome pre-installed software, including a particularly persistent copy of Norton AntiVirus that does you the “favor” of checking and putting a badge next to every hyperlink on your Google search page. This program is easily dispatched with an uninstall, but we’re ready for the pre-installed sponsored software trend to end already.

In terms of battery life, we suspected that the touch screen might end up being a power drain. While we still find the battery life respectable overall, it fell short of Lenovo’s estimates in our tests.

Lenovo pegs the X1 Carbon Touch’s battery life at “up to 8.2 hours.” We gave it the relatively easy “typical workflow” test of Internet surfing, e-mailing, IMing, and text entry with Wi-Fi on. Brightness was set to about 40 percent. In this test, we got about six hours and 40 minutes out of the battery. When playing a movie with Wi-Fi on, brightness at around 75 percent and full volume, we got about five hours 15 minutes out of the computer.

Spec

Base ThinkPad X1 Carbon model

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch reviewed

Highest-end ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Processor

Intel Core i7-3667U

Intel Core i5-3427U

Intel Core i5-3427U

RAM

4GB

4GB

8GB

Storage

128GB

128GB

256GB

Graphics

Intel HD 4000 Graphics

Intel HD 4000 Graphics

Intel HD 4000 Graphics

Screen resolution

1600x900

1600x900

1600x900

Price

$1249

$1499

$1964

We stand by our assessment of the X1 Carbon as the Ultrabook to beat, but we’re a little more hesitant about its see-me-feel-me cousin. The touch screen version is priced at $1,499, $150 more than the base model non-touch X1 Carbon. This isn't wildly expensive, but it's enough of a difference to consider whether you really, really want to be able to poke your computer in the face.

If you think there’s a chance that you’ll like touching Windows 8 instead of clicking on it, and may cozy up with it on the couch to prod as your second screen while you watch TV as do so many tablet users, it may be worth coughing up the extra cash to keep your options open. But it’s still not only possible, but easy to move around Windows with more conventional control schemes like the touchpad and touchpoint. If the Windows 8 app store becomes a fertile breeding ground for innovation, you could miss out. But if you’re not interested, the regular X1 Carbon is always there for you.

47 Reader Comments

Remember, it's not called the Metro interface anymore - I realise that's what people are still referring to it as but that's not going to change unless reviewers and others stop using the name.

Poole may not be needing colour accuracy for this type of machine but when there's quite a few other ultra books with beautiful 1080p ips screens I think it's big downside on the X1 particularly when it isn't cheap. The screen was a deal breaker for me when choosing a machine.

I will never buy ultrabook/convertible class machine without touch from now on. When I bought my current machine (that has a lot of problems not related to touch and btw I will never buy Dell again) I was skeptical about the touch screen but I catch myself stretching to the monitor of my desktop computer sometimes forgetting that it does not have touch. I mainly use the touch when browsing for scrolling and zooming but I also use it for various content consumption use cases like reading word documents, etc.

I am touch addict.

P.S. Interestingly scrolling and zooming with touch in IE (yes IE is my primary browser) feels different (and better) than the same operation with mouse. It is possible that this means a lot for my touch experience.

A friend of mine got this laptop. He asked me to take a quick look at it to see if it lacked anything. I spent maybe 10 minutes on it, was a pretty smooth running system, especially with the SSD helping with load time.

He is retired from a MNC and he asked someone there he knew to add him into a mass order for home use laptops. It came with Start8 preinstalled so he didn't even know about the interface-known-as-Metro. And he didn't know there was a touch screen on it either.

But he did get it at a very decent discount (about USD 1k).

I wonder if that is what companies will do, if they eventually upgrade to Windows 8 - buy Start8 as a cost of business so that everyone is able to get on with work without retraining.

Most other reviews of touch laptops considered touch to be a great feature. And I believe them. Whenever I try out one in a shop, it feels very natural. Even on a 10 inch tablet the desktop worked better than I'd have guessed.

But adjusting the screen resolution or zoom factor might be necessary.

I bought the original X1 for my wife and it's a great machine, she loves it. I had issues with the screen door effect on the screen. However, we both agree that there seems to be no use in touchscreen functionality in this particular laptop, plus the hinges won't let the screen flip 360. Now, if I were getting a touchscreen laptop, I'd get either the Yoga or the Dell XPS 12.

I will never buy ultrabook/convertible class machine without touch from now on. When I bought my current machine (that has a lot of problems not related to touch and btw I will never buy Dell again) I was skeptical about the touch screen but I catch myself stretching to the monitor of my desktop computer sometimes forgetting that it does not have touch. I mainly use the touch when browsing for scrolling and zooming but I also use it for various content consumption use cases like reading word documents, etc.

I am touch addict.

P.S. Interestingly scrolling and zooming with touch in IE (yes IE is my primary browser) feels different (and better) than the same operation with mouse. It is possible that this means a lot for my touch experience.

I just tried it in a store and I found the touch interface totally useless when using office. But it is true that you keep reaching for the screen after you come from metro even when it does not really work to well. So for me personally it was really bad and a proof that for me mixing touch and mouse is not workable but that is maybe only true for me.

I will never buy ultrabook/convertible class machine without touch from now on. When I bought my current machine (that has a lot of problems not related to touch and btw I will never buy Dell again) I was skeptical about the touch screen but I catch myself stretching to the monitor of my desktop computer sometimes forgetting that it does not have touch. I mainly use the touch when browsing for scrolling and zooming but I also use it for various content consumption use cases like reading word documents, etc.

I am touch addict.

P.S. Interestingly scrolling and zooming with touch in IE (yes IE is my primary browser) feels different (and better) than the same operation with mouse. It is possible that this means a lot for my touch experience.

I just tried it in a store and I found the touch interface totally useless when using office. But it is true that you keep reaching for the screen after you come from metro even when it does not really work to well. So for me personally it was really bad and a proof that for me mixing touch and mouse is not workable but that is maybe only true for me.

I don't reach for the touch screen after coming from Metro. In fact I barely use the "Don't Call it Metro" apps or the start screen. While it is true that Office for content creation cannot be used with touch it is perfect for reading.

The resolution of the screen isn't *that* bad. I think it's great Lenovo is offering this as an option. I was skeptical of touch screen laptops until I played with the Yoga for the first time: great machine, fun experience. Windows 8 is getting a bad rap because people don't like change, but I never hear anybody criticize the speed of the OS, or it's fluidity. It was actually kind of fun to use, when I played with it.

Frankly, as a recent OSX convert, I'm a little jealous. I still wouldn't want touch to be the primary way I interact with a laptop, but it's pretty cool having it as an option. I think MS is onto something with Win8, but I guess the market will be the deciding factor. If it turns out Win8 fails to capture public mind-share, I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now I'm reading an article on Ars about how the OS was ahead of it's time, and that an integrated experience amongst devices is (by then) taken for granted.

"The only time I felt myself compelled to swipe was when waking up the computer and needing to get through the lock screen, which needs to be swiped or pulled away."

Unless Lenovo modified something, you shouldn't have to do this. In Windows 8 you can just press a single key on the keyboard and that will cause the lock screen to disappear and present you with the password prompt field...

There's something I don't get. I was going to buy this computer because all the reviews on the web talk about how awesome it is. But then I did some actual user research and it turns out the screen on this thing is downright terrible. Here's a whole 100 page thread with lots and lots of users talking about the terrible screen quality:http://forum.notebookreview.com/thinkpa ... touch.html

Casey, you mentioned washed out colors and not so deep blacks. But what about the "screen-door' effect that many people are complaining about? Or how the text doesn't seem crisp because of something on the screen messing up the pixel quality? I'm confused how so many users find it terrible but none of the official reviewers from Engadget/TheVerge/Ars/etc?

"The only time I felt myself compelled to swipe was when waking up the computer and needing to get through the lock screen, which needs to be swiped or pulled away."

Unless Lenovo modified something, you shouldn't have to do this. In Windows 8 you can just press a single key on the keyboard and that will cause the lock screen to disappear and present you with the password prompt field...

As far as I can tell, this is true. Any key, including shift, will make the lock screen disappear. A mouse click also works.

Only compared with retina displays. Pixels per inch is on par with the Macbook Air, which caps out at 1440x900 for a 13" screen. Unless you meant the fact that it's a 16:9 display instead of a 16:10 - on that I completely agree, but it's pretty hard to find any 16:10 displays anymore period.

.劉煒 wrote:

Actually, to heck with ultrabooks.

The best lightweight laptop around is *still* the Thinkpad X230 series. Longer life and more power than the Airs, A decent IPS screen ... the only flaw, really, is that they have a touchpad built in.

Unless, of course, you want a bigger screen than 12.5" or more than 1366x768 resolution.

Surely there is something wrong.The base model has i7-3667U while the highest-end model has Intel Core i5-3427U?

stormbeta wrote:

Lonyo wrote:

1600x900 max res is a little weak.

Only compared with retina displays. Pixels per inch is on par with the Macbook Air, which caps out at 1440x900 for a 13" screen. Unless you meant the fact that it's a 16:9 display instead of a 16:10 - on that I completely agree, but it's pretty hard to find any 16:10 displays anymore period.

.劉煒 wrote:

Actually, to heck with ultrabooks.

The best lightweight laptop around is *still* the Thinkpad X230 series. Longer life and more power than the Airs, A decent IPS screen ... the only flaw, really, is that they have a touchpad built in.

Unless, of course, you want a bigger screen than 12.5" or more than 1366x768 resolution.

Too high resolution in Windows desktop on a small screen is not very good. Legacy windows is not very good at supporting retina type pixel densities. Maybe Windows 9 when they provide a good automatic upscaling graphic stack to legacy programs as well, one can dream.

Too high resolution in Windows desktop on a small screen is not very good. Legacy windows is not very good at supporting retina type pixel densities. Maybe Windows 9 when they provide a good automatic upscaling graphic stack to legacy programs as well, one can dream.

Definitely. Part of the problem IMO is that the scaling is applied to all monitors equally - you won't be able to use an external monitor with a high-dpi laptop all that well because of this. That's the reason I'd rather not go higher than ~130-135 dpi as well (even though I'm envious of the retina MBPs, I'll admit it).

Remember it's a capacitive touch screen here, plus Metro aren't really usable for anything it's only an environment on top of legacy Windows to begin with and touch support in Windows is hardly improved at all in 8. You have a multitouch trackpad and a trackpoint here why would you need a capacitive screen for input? It's more useful and easier with multitouch trackpads, multitouch mouses and the like to use Metro, start or switch or close programs, or to bring it up as a start screen any how? Certainly more user friendly and however you like to try the narrative that it's built for touch it's simply not true from an engineer standpoint and users certainly doesn't seem attracted to it or the shoddy consumer products that try to cater to a none existing market. Back to it. It's not penable i.e. stylus capable, can't replace mouse for fine stuff, can not be used to draw or take notes and it doesn't have a hinge so you can flip the screen and use in tabletpc mode.

Lenovo still has a modern convertible tablet-PC in X230T so why would you buy this? A 500 dollar Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 has a Wacom digitizer it's totally rubbish to try to push stuff that you can't use with a stylus on a 1500 dollar machine or try to replace a mouse with it in consumer devices by removing trackpoints/trackpads. If you need gestures you already have a multitouch trackpad that should be used, should be improved and can support all that stuff with much easier. In other considerations you would obviously use a keyboard for almost all the input in a notebook style setup any way.

And no Microsoft doesn't seem to think about making Windows scale better, it's actually not better at all even in Metro and creates even more of a split between Metro and desktop. "Modern" apps with the new Windows Runtime APIs in Metro doesn't really do this better then old ones. Metro scales 100%, 140% and 180%, desktop and all the Windows software especially those from Microsoft on the same system has DPI-scaling with 100%, 125%, 150% and custom. Which is quite absurd when stuff like the IE browser in Metromode is actually a Win32-program running it's old DLL behind some thin-layer.

Too high resolution in Windows desktop on a small screen is not very good. Legacy windows is not very good at supporting retina type pixel densities. Maybe Windows 9 when they provide a good automatic upscaling graphic stack to legacy programs as well, one can dream.

You know that Vista introduced whole-program upscaling, and it's still there in 8, right? (8 changed things where it doesn't take effect below 130%, though, for some weird reason.) A fair amount of software I use every day has adapted and no longer looks a bit blurry, either, and is reasonably usable on retina displays; what doesn't looks the same at 250% on a retina as 130% on a regular screen.

Also, according to some accounts there will be an update in April with Haswell...

No, Haswell for Ultrabooks won't be out until July. Even the quad cores have been pushed back to June.

foxyshadis wrote:

You know that Vista introduced whole-program upscaling, and it's still there in 8, right? (8 changed things where it doesn't take effect below 130%, though, for some weird reason.) A fair amount of software I use every day has adapted and no longer looks a bit blurry, either, and is reasonably usable on retina displays; what doesn't looks the same at 250% on a retina as 130% on a regular screen.

Slightly blurry & legible > crisp & illegible.

The problem is, programs have to support scaling. Some still don't. Even in W8 I've found a couple that are literally unusable at 125%.

I will never buy ultrabook/convertible class machine without touch from now on. When I bought my current machine (that has a lot of problems not related to touch and btw I will never buy Dell again) I was skeptical about the touch screen but I catch myself stretching to the monitor of my desktop computer sometimes forgetting that it does not have touch. I mainly use the touch when browsing for scrolling and zooming but I also use it for various content consumption use cases like reading word documents, etc.

I am touch addict.

P.S. Interestingly scrolling and zooming with touch in IE (yes IE is my primary browser) feels different (and better) than the same operation with mouse. It is possible that this means a lot for my touch experience.

Yep. I experienced the same with the Apple Newton eMate. Very intuitive. No need for a mouse either. Less intrusive then a trackpoint.

I wonder if Lenovo is going to come out with an Windows 8 X-Series convertible or are they going to retire the line in favour of the ThinkPad Tablet 2, the Helix or the Yoga?

More likely they will consider Tablet 2, Lynx, Twist, Helix and Yoga failed enterprises. Lot's of these attempts for the consumer space or Windows 8 will die out. X230T is stills there, with Ivy Bridge and Active Digitizer. Fujitsu still has Ivy Bridge based convertible Tablet PC's. Dell and HP didn't update their's though, but I guess they will have to give the business customers something other then Sandy Bridge and Nehalem/Arrandale. Eventually. It's not like an Core i7-2640M is that slow. Their customers won't move to consumer based stuff that for the most time doesn't even have the option of an active digitizer.

Remember, it's not called the Metro interface anymore - I realise that's what people are still referring to it as but that's not going to change unless reviewers and others stop using the name.

Poole may not be needing colour accuracy for this type of machine but when there's quite a few other ultra books with beautiful 1080p ips screens I think it's big downside on the X1 particularly when it isn't cheap. The screen was a deal breaker for me when choosing a machine.

Remember, it's not called the Metro interface anymore - I realise that's what people are still referring to it as but that's not going to change unless reviewers and others stop using the name.

Poole may not be needing colour accuracy for this type of machine but when there's quite a few other ultra books with beautiful 1080p ips screens I think it's big downside on the X1 particularly when it isn't cheap. The screen was a deal breaker for me when choosing a machine.

John

Yeah, I think they call it the Modern Style style now.

Style style style style.

It's Modern UI now, also called Modern UI-style and Windows 8-style formally in development docs it's Windows Store apps versus Windows Desktop apps but lets get real it will always be Metro for the users, techs and journalists. Modern UI wasn't a new way of describing the tech behind it only the design language. So it just won't be referenced by developers or when selling apps.

@foxyshadis Scaling works as before, you set 100%, 125% or 150% within Windows (Win32/Desktop) and it's 100%, 140% or 180% within the Metro-environment. XP-mode scaling is still there too. Which is generally recommended.

Too high resolution in Windows desktop on a small screen is not very good. Legacy windows is not very good at supporting retina type pixel densities. Maybe Windows 9 when they provide a good automatic upscaling graphic stack to legacy programs as well, one can dream.

They've had one since 2006, and it works pretty well, actually. The only major sticking point now is that it applies the same scaling factor to every screen on a system, which isn't good if you have, for example, a hi res internal display and a lower resolution external monitor.

Yeah, apart from the occasional "ZOMG I'll never buy a computer without a touchscreen again", the entire windows 8 fiasco is getting more and more pronounced. Jesus Christ, just look at all the money flushed down the drain making ultraexpensive laptops nobody's buying. In the meantime, Google is busy making the augmented reality future come to life, Apple is bathing in money on their "oh so old and dated" interfaces...

Honestly, imo, most of the time I'd prefer to have voice control and/or Kinect/Leap-like control if I'm using my PC as those control methods have more options than touch. Touch can be interesting for certain applications (gaming, using it as a tablet on the go), but when I'm SITTING down in a traditional way doing traditional tasks, I doubt very much touch is going to be very compelling.

That said, integrate a Kinect/Leap-like camera to identify me based on my SIZE and facial features, let the computer virtually image me to use into games so people online see my face as it is potentially, let the computer respond to my changes in mood or even spatially where I'm at in the room, have the computer start doing things I ask it to do in the background while I'm typing.

That'd be the future of computing.

And, MS? Make these things optional. Don't tell people how to do things without any way to go back to the old way. That's just stupid.